It’s Tuesday and I’m packing up my lab work, getting ready to leave when Bailey’s dad texts me saying something is wrong with Chloe’s eye.  He says it looks like something is in it because she keeps rubbing it and won’t open it.  So I make my way down to the house (only a couple minutes) and I see something is VERY wrong with her eye.   We try to flush it with warm water but her eyelid is bulging.  And when you open her eye its red and swollen.  I do my best not to enter panic mode, but my gut tells me she needs to be seen right NOW.  I quickly search for an emergency vet nearby (its 6pm and I’m using my iPhone), but the closest one is 30 min away.  It is in the city I live which is good if she needs to stay overnight, but inconvenient since it means waiting longer to find out what’s wrong.  Quickly, I make a call for an appointment and then I book it as fast as I can (I didn’t want to get a speeding ticket, so I kept it to 70-75) up to the vet.  We get checked in and Chloe just thinks we are going on an adventure, wondering why her eye feels weird, but excited nonetheless at being in a new place.  After some waiting, we are taken into an examination room, wait some more until a nurse finally comes in.

And did I mention that Chloe found a seating area all for herself in the examination room? You see its for dogs to lay on, while the humans stand and wait.

First she looks at the eye and says they will probably dilate her pupil, then stain it, and pull back her 3rd eyelid to see if there is an obstruction and if her eye surface has been scratched.  But first she needs to be weighed and have her temperature taken. So once those fun things are over with, the vet comes in.  She repeats what the nurse said regarding the eye procedure and proceeds to take Chloe out of the examination room.  After about 10 minutes,  I hear the distinct “clink, clink” of her dog tags and once the door opens, a smiling, wiggly, tripawd is eager to greet me.

The vet tells me it is a good thing I brought her in because her eye could have gotten worse if left untreated.  This is what they found. (My hands are small, so that is probably a good couple inches long).

Her eye is severly scratched from that fox tail, so the vet says she will send me home with eye drop antibiotics to prevent infection (promote healing) and some rimadyl for any discomfort. Then she says she wants me to bring Chloe in for a check up 3-4 days later to make sure the site is healing well.

While we are waiting to be checked out, what do we see? ANOTHER TRIPAWD!!!  The only pictures are a bit blurry because he was a wiggly boy, much like Chloe is a wiggly girl. But as you can see he is a front right amp! I didn’t get a chance to talk to the owner since I was trying to pay for the appointment, learn what meds to give when etc… I really only had enough time to snap a picture and give the man a tripawds.com business card.

The Checkup
Now it’s 4 days later, Saturday.  More waiting, and more wiggliness from Chloe.

A new vet saw Chloe this time and immediately told us he has a three legged cat.  I decided I liked him already, since he owns an animal with similar physical characteristics and probably knows more than most vets with regards to care/concerns for 3 legged animals.  He started off by giving her a rub down and felt a small lump on her back right leg (on the quad).  I told him that I have felt that for the last few months, but it hasn’t changed in size or shape and feels much different in texture than her spindle cell sarcoma tumor.  You can pull it away from the skin and it feels squishy.   I thought it might be a cyst or fat deposit of some kind and he wanted to do an aspirate to determine exactly what it was.  Yes we came in for an eye check up and we found something unrelated…. usually how it goes.  Anyway, he took her in the back to dilate and stain her left eye again.  Good news. The size of the ulcer (what they call the scratch/gouge in her eye from the foxtail) diminished in size by 80%.  Apparently it was pretty humongous when I first strolled in there Tuesday night. He also showed me a slide of the aspirate and said it looked like it was just a fatty deposit/lipoma, but that we should send it in for analysis to confirm.  As long as it doesn’t grow in size or change in texture, he said, its nothing to worry about.  If it gets too large though, it would need to be removed.  So that is something I am going to keep my eye on regularly.  And in a couple days I will find out what the aspirate analysis says.

So, I now call Chloe Miss Green Eye since the stain is green and makes her left eye have a green hue in most lights.  We will go back for a check up in 2 weeks to make sure it has healed completely.  At that time too, we will be going in for her yearly physical: blood work, stool sample, temperature, teeth check etc… and they might want to do a chest xray just to make sure she really, really is cancer free. From spindle cell sarcoma anyway.  Oh how life with a pet is never boring! And did I mention it is a pain in the A** trying to get eye drops in a strong, wiggly dog?!!?!?! I manage, and I have to be patient, but I CANT WAIT till her eye is healed. Lesson learned here? I need to be cautious when letting my dog run through bushes/fields with these NASTY and EXPENSIVE fox tails.

Happy Girl!